Our View: Welcome to Christmas season, and good luck

And then, all at once, the Christmas season was upon us. The decorations are up. There are Christmas songs on the radio. People are shoving one another aside in a mad dash to buy an enormous television. Oh boy. How long until it's over?

We hope all our readers had an excellent Thanksgiving holiday full of tasty foods and time with friends. And as you take a break this morning from preparing turkey sandwiches and warming up leftover stuffing, here are a few items from recent news that are worth a second look:

? Students at the University of Wisconsin Marathon County outpaced all other two-year campuses in the state in a race to register voters. The students involved in UWMC's Student Government Association deserve congrats for their strong showing - and thanks from all who value getting more voices involved in our democracy.

The university's United Council established goals for each campus, broken down by population, and then measured the campuses by their proportional performance. (That kept Wausau students from having to compete in raw numbers with those in the population center of Madison, for example.) By these rules, UWMC finished seventh in the entire UW System.

Ian Reese of Wausau, the president of UWMC's student government, said the challenge was that most UWMC students live off campus. While students at other schools could simply canvas residence halls, Reese's team dedicated hours trying to reach students at events.

And in a positive sign, the biggest obstacle students faced in getting others to register? Reese said it was this: "I'm already registered to vote."

"With there having been so many elections this year, we talked to a lot of folks who had already registered to vote because of the (Gov. Scott) Walker recall," Reese said.

Among others, UWMC beat out UW-Milwaukee and UW-Green Bay, Reese said. Well done!

? This weekend closes the gun-deer hunting season. We hope all our readers got the buck they wanted and will feast on venison burgers for months to come. The oft-criticized Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources this year tried out some new ways of interacting with hunters and providing information about the hunt, including a hunting "tweetalong" during which they posted on Twitter (@WNDR) a series of updates about a day in the life of a DNR warden during the hunt.

We're for all sorts of ways of reaching out to the public. The DNR's experiments this hunting season were a good way to connect with the not-inconsiderable number of hunters this year who spent time out in the tree stand with their smartphones, and to spread information about the hunt to those who followed along at home.

? We do not endorse "Black Friday creep." This year a number of stores, mostly large, national chains, started their Black Friday sales on Thanksgiving evening. Look, we've made our peace with the fact that many Americans seem to regard Black Friday shopping as a contest to be won, and if folks want to wait in line for this or that midnight sale, who are we to judge? Some of those enormous televisions are pretty cool.

But moving a midnight opening to, say, an 8 p.m. opening means shifting the waiting-in-line portion of the day earlier, too, and pretty soon people no longer have any time on Thanksgiving to watch football and marvel at how much turkey they ate.

According to preliminary reports, the early-opening strategy successfully attracted customers, which means we're probably stuck with it. But five or 10 years from now when "Black Friday" sales start on Thursday before the turkey is even out of the oven, don't say we didn't try to warn you.

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Our View: Welcome to Christmas season, and good luck

And then, all at once, the Christmas season was upon us. The decorations are up. There are Christmas songs on the radio. People are shoving one another aside in a mad dash to buy an enormous

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